Green Yourself!

15 August 2008

After tripping over this thing for the past two months, whilst looking everywhere for the right pieces to spell out my message, the thing is finally hung. At great peril no less. With a rickety borrowed ladder and a dying borrowed drill, I stuck it up on the side of Upstairs Antiques on Flynn Ave just in time.

It actually looks better hung in it's spot than it did on my floor (thank goodness).

11 August 2008

I thought I was done with this, but after a few emails from concerned friends, I couldn't resist checking the google status of the mother daughter blogs.

My mother, Patsy Ittner's blog, "Stop the Stalker" (formerly "Skinny Fingers") has been changed to the name of her Realty and all the vitriol has been removed. It simply refers to her business now.

Oh how I wish I'd saved the screen shots for proof. Oh well, plenty of you saw it while it was up and burning bridges.

I don't expect to hear from her again. If she thinks her retreat is going to change a word on my own blog, she's mistaken. I plan to leave it as it is, but I am relieved that the skirmish appears to be over (for now).

I can't help but feel a little sad that she took it down though. It was so perfectly incriminating (to her). I loved the part where she makes fun of me for the pony memory. Her tone is exactly like a school yard bully (or Mommy Dearest).

Oh well. It's the first sane action she's exhibited since this whole thing began. Maybe she finally got some help.

02 August 2008

I know we're all tiring of the war between Patsy Ittner (my birth mother) and myself but I can't help but be slightly amused by her latest rant about me in her blog. I've never been one to enjoy shock jocks or shows like Jackass etc., but this has a certain ambulance chasing allure - watching my mother self destruct.

I've accepted for years that she is insane but even I never realized HOW insane until this spat began. She's been spewing the most incredible nonsense about me that it boggles the mind to view the output of her vicious imagination.

Here are some rebuttals to her claims:

I would know her if she showed up at my door (how could I not? I just hope she's not armed).

I do know and am in contact with my children (all four of them). Two of them are adults now and the younger two live with their father and his new wife and baby in Virginia and all are healthy and well.

She claims I have $40K in outstanding debt, but the truth is uncharacteristically for a woman of my age, I have almost no debt at all. I have one credit card under $2.5K and otherwise my bills are paid and I owe no personal debts.

She also claims I have been producing emails in her name. It's clear that she has no grip on reality, but I assure you readers that none of the items reprinted in this blog were made up by me. She's the one that used her sisters email address to slander me on my blog and photo sites and the direct emails are copied and pasted from my mail account. I only changed the recipients addresses for their privacy. If it ever comes to it, any court of law can simply subpoena the historical records to prove that these letters and comments came from her IP address verbatim.

She claims I abandoned all my children and that she can prove it. Look
at the picture of my daughter and myself on the previous post. I would
post pics of the others, but I am reluctant to post their faces for
obvious reasons. She's threatened bodily harm to everyone I love. The
truth is, she abandoned me many times over the course of my childhood
and has insisted she's not my mother over and over in her blogs and
emails into my adulthood. Sadly, whether either of us likes it or not,
the truth is...she is my mother in distasteful genetics alone.

I could go on and on, but I won't. Frankly, I'm beginning to get bored with the whole thing, however vindicating. As I said, I've always known she was insane, but this level of insanity takes even me by surprise.

To sum up, I've read (and experienced) that sociopaths are masters of projection. True to form, nearly every accusation Mom has made towards me is actually true of herself. Notice I am not naming names while she's offering everyone we know up for dirt. She claims I spend all my time trying to ruin innocent people as I use my existing blog to broadcast my defense while she's created a blog for the purpose of defaming me with lies.

So who's the slanderer here? Who's trying vehemently to ruin or "drive the other over the edge?" The whole saga is presented in this filthy display of our familial laundry pile for anyone to judge.

Bring the lawsuit mom, if you dare. I'm confident that it can only end badly for you. I've done nothing but defend myself from the onset. My rebuttals are either historical fact, or my best recollections of the events. I've avoided profanity. I've removed her business name. I have merely presented my defense using her own words to condemn her.

Let the evidence stand for itself.XXKHT

"I have longed to move awayFrom the hissing of the spent lie...." ~ Dylan Thomas

01 August 2008

Here's a pic of my daughter Ashley and I last winter. We're very close and totally blessed to have each other. She lives two blocks away in her own apartment taking care of herself and doing very well. We see each other almost every day and I can't imagine daily life without her.

31 July 2008

Ahh summer. What a fantastic summer I've been having - especially these last few weeks. Psychotic mother-daughter wars aside, this summer has been chock-a-bloc with amazing experiences.

For starters, the garden is doing marvelously. I've been eating kale, rainbow chard, beans, carrots, beets, radishes, broccoli, cukes, herbs, lettuces and flowers from her bounty for the past month. The squash are beginning to come in and the tomatoes are hale and hearty and waiting to ripen if we ever get the long days of sun they crave.

I've made dozens of new friends mostly of the artistic bent and these past few weeks gifted me with the company of an incredible young man who - to put it bluntly - rocked my socks!

Between the bike rides in the rain, swimming in Lake Champlain, cooking amazing meals together, and staying up late nights sharing our life stories, dreams and philosophical bents it was pure heaven.

I say was because as of yesterday morning he left port for Vancouver, BC to make a new life with his 3 year Canadian work visa hoping to help Chinese immigrants using the skills he learned at McGill in Asian studies and Mandarin with a smattering of philosophy and a dose of hedonism that years in beautiful Montreal going to University will provide.

He's currently driving in a veggie oil powered truck with a buddy he met through Craig's list and I'm thrilled for him, despite the loss of his exquisite presence in my otherwise satisfyingly happy world.

It was an intense and amazing ride and I for one am the better for it even as I sit here feeling slightly lost and wondering how the summer could top the experience.

Still, now that he's gone I'm feeling the urge to get more creative again and use some of the passion he generated to its productive effect. I want to re-read Oscar Wilde so I can bond through the ages via his love (obsession) with youth.

I have the ever present art deadlines and work and the garden to distract and Burlington is still my beloved city ripe with opportunity.

I'm sorry he won't be here at my side to enjoy the coming months of the harvest with the incredible meals it will afford us, or the outdoor parties and afternoon naps in the hammock, but I have no doubt that he'll find his own great summer adventures out west.

Bon Voyage Golden Boy...

Missing him lots but keeping on keeping on...Both myself and B'town will always have a welcome place for him the next time he rambles through.

XXKHT

"And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st," ~Wm Shakespeare

30 July 2008

So sad. So desperate. Mom's made a blog of her own and has tried in a "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?" kind of way to lash back against the exposure she received here for her abusiveness.

She's played the name and blame game there, and you can read it here: "Skinny Fingers"

(recently changed to "Stop the Stalker") How creepy is that (original) name? Conjures an image of a Brother's Grimm style witch.

Anyway, there you can read where she struggles to find the names of her own grandchildren. She mixes up their names and stats like a drunk at a cocktail party.

Now by all means, read my blog and find out for yourself if her claims are true. I've slandered no one. I've simply reprinted the words exchanged between us and written my version of the events for posterity. The only person absolutely named is her.

Ok, I did write a kind of nasty entry one bad day last winter when my former partner was being a particularly pungent poop sandwich, but other than that and the Bushies and the racists and those who prey on people's weaknesses to make money, I've never "gone after" anyone.

Mom thinks I'm opening new blogs constantly because she's ignorant of the internet blogging process. I suggest she read up on the various ways to market her blog so she too can get in on the fun. I'm not making new blogs mommy, other sources are picking this one up and republishing it. It's simple really. It operates itself.

I heard this week that she phoned her mother (who she claims to hate) and said she took a bunch of pills and wanted to say goodbye. It sounds like she's been having a hard time with pills if she has enough around to even imagine a lethal dose. I hope she gets some help. This level of energy expenditure on such negativity can't be good for anybody.

As for me, I've had two of the most splendid weeks ever. I'd almost forgotten about this dirty business. More on that in a different post however. I don't want the ugly tarnishing the beautiful by proximity.

28 July 2008

Last night I had the unfortunate opportunity to witness racism in one of it's ugliest forms: police profiling. As I was sitting outside a cafe enjoying a serene summer moment in my beloved city an argument broke out in a nearby parking lot.

Three young black kids and a white couple were on the verge of a physical fight with the white male lunging at one of the black kids screaming the "N bomb" over and over while his white girlfriend threw herself between them. This went on for a few minutes before a gathering crowd, ending in the bigoted couple slinking away still screaming their disgusting slurs.

The black kids tried to leave in the other direction but before they could get out of there six cop cars roared up and surrounded the black group. They held the boys there for some time particularly paying attention to the boy who was attacked.

I was relieved to see them taking a statement, but also horrified to notice that none of the six cars headed in the direction of the white aggressors. Finally, they let the black kids go on their way but one white cop tailed them on foot at a discreet distance.

I was completely disgusted by the entire scene and while it was happening I imagined how I could get involved without getting hurt. I waited through the "statement taking process" to see if they might choose to arrest the kid or some such nonsense, at which time I was prepared to go to the police station to offer a statement of my own.

What really bothers me is the drama that surrounded the black kids while it was apparent that rather than treat this like a hate crime (which it was) they chose to assume the trouble makers were the blacks.

Burlington is ridiculously heavy on it's white population (wealthy and poor) and the poor welfare clans have an inexplicably racist superiority complex. They're just as poor as any inner city blacks I've ever seen and just as f'ed up with their drug problems, domestic violence, absentee fathers etc. It's the standard state of being poor I guess. Too bad they have to add racism to their many other problems.

On the other hand, Burlington has an amazing African immigrant population juxtaposed against the otherwise practically monochromatic town in their vibrant traditional dress often with exquisite children in tow. I've never seen a single negative incident involving any of them and consider their presence a great gift to the city and my personal aesthetic.

It's a shame that the police here are so narrow minded. It's even more of a shame that the kids last night had to endure their ignorance.

I saw them a few minutes later as I was riding home on my bicycle and stopped to tell them I was sorry for what happened and that I saw the whole thing and felt ashamed of my city and my race on their behalf. They said they appreciated it and we all rode off into the night poorer in spirit for the experience.

24 July 2008

A few months ago, I was contacted by my old internet friend Scott Austen Burgess. It was one of the rare instances where my beloved internet let me down because my chat program (Adium) failed to save the address before I could reply. I typed my message and it disappeared into the cosmos and I didn't hear from him again.

The truth is, I've been trying to get in touch for ages and I'm dying to talk to him after the several years that have passed with no contact.

The same goes for Aaron Anderson formerly known as "Openboil" (of podunk Ohio) and Robert Allen (of princess street, Old Town, Alexandria, Virginia) aka "Mr Puppet". Chances are poor that the latter two will find this, but Scott (if I know you like I think I do) will google this eventually and realize that I was not blowing him (you) off, but that it was a technical malfunction and I am indeed very interested in finding out what happened to you and how you are faring.

Write me again! All of you. I am always happy to hear from old dear friends. Sending this message into the ether with hope,XXKHT(key word: Baggywinkle)

22 July 2008

I entered a local Foodie Photo Contest and won second place with my entry "Spiracle"
and my third entry "Cockalot"
was featured on Mistress Maeve's blog at the paper (neither she nor I can figure out why they didn't use the shot....)